It was a fab, fab, fab, fab world

Rarely do film festivals celebrate the good, the bad and even the ugly all at once. But the American Cinematheque’s “Mods & Rockers” film festival, which begins Tuesday at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, joyfully embraces both the classic and the truly dreadful.

The sixth annual festival of “Fab Flicks From Shag-a-delic Sixties” features some of the grooviest celluloid delights of the era, including the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night,” the James Bond thriller “Goldfinger,” Tony Richardson’s black comedy “The Loved One,” Roger Vadim’s sexy sci-fi romance “Barbarella” and Richard Lester’s haunting “Petulia” as well as the most guilty of pleasures like Anthony Newley’s X-rated musical “Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?,” a Jacqueline Susann double bill of “Valley of the Dolls” and “The Love Machine” and the obscure thriller “The Million Eyes of Sumuru,” which stars both pop idol-”Beach Party” icon Frankie Avalon and Werner Herzog’s favorite, Klaus Kinski.

“Running through all the films is this exhilarating spirit,” says humorist Martin Lewis, who co-created and produces the festival with Cinematheque programmer Dennis Bartok. “I don’t mean to seem like an old codger who is waxing lyrical about the past, but there was an absolute spirit of that time of a kind of can-do exuberance and a positive energy. And in the ‘60s, people weren’t afraid to fail. They would take risks. It was not the end of your career to make an honest failure. You were given a gold star for trying, and in these cautious times, people don’t experiment, certainly not in the studio system.”

Back in the ‘60s, mainstream studios even produced X-rated material such as “Hieronymous Merkin,” which was released by Universal. Newley not only stars in the 1969 semiautobiographical film but also directed, produced, wrote, composed the songs and cast his then-wife Joan Collins and their two children in the film. Even Milton Berle shows up as a character named Goodtime Eddie Filth.

“It was a glorious failure,” says Lewis. “It is outrageous to think a movie like that would get made by a studio today. People will be slack-jawed [watching] the whole film.”

But a lot of these films, adds Bartok, are more substantive than just a trip down memory lane wearing psychedelic granny glasses. “On the surface of it, it seems like it is all this frothy, paisley-colored fun,” says Bartok.

He points to one double bill on July 10, ‘The Loved One’ and ‘Lord Love a Duck.’ “ ‘Lord’ is one of the most subversive movies that came out of Hollywood. It is really a twisted bit of business. And ‘Petulia’ is a brilliant film, a very sad bittersweet movie that for some odd reason isn’t as well known as it should be.”

The festival will also pay tribute to the 50th anniversary of rock and the movie musicals that inspired the mods and rockers films of the 1960s with the first annual “Rock-Around-The-Clock-Athon!,” a 30-hour celebration taking place Tuesday and Wednesday in Hollywood. Events include the induction of Bill Haley & the Comets into the Hollywood RockWalk and a concert by the surviving Comets at the Viper Room.

Tuesday evening the “Mods & Rockers” festival opens with the two of the first jukebox musicals, produced in 1956, that inspired the rock films of the 1960s: “Rock Around the Clock,” starring Bill Haley & the Comets, and “Don’t Knock the Rock,” which also starred the group as well as Little Richard.

Surprisingly, says Bartok, the audiences for the festival have become younger and younger. “There is a whole kind of Vesper scooter-driving mod crowd that will go to different music events around town,” he says. “So you get these kids who love this sense of fashion, that Cockney irreverence that is a part of these films.”

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‘Mods & Rockers’

Where: American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, and the

Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica.

When: Tuesday through July 17 at the Egyptian; Friday through July 10 at the Aero.

Price: $6 to $9.

Contact: (323) 466 FILM or go to www.americancinematheque.com or www.modsandrockers.com.

Schedule

Tuesday: “Rock Around the Clock,” “Don’t Knock the Rock,” 8 p.m.

Friday: “Danger: Diabolik,” “Barbarella,” 7:30 p.m.; at Aero, “A Hard Day’s Night,” 7:30 p.m.

Saturday: “A Hard Day’s Night,” 6 p.m.; “Goldfinger,” “The Million Eyes of Sumuru,” 8:45 p.m.; at Aero, “Valley of the Dolls,” “Blow Up,” 6 p.m.

July 10: “The Loved One,” “Lord Love a Duck,” 5 p.m.; at Aero, “Goldfinger,” 6 p.m.

July 14: “Angel, Angel, Down We Go,” “Maryjane,” 7:30 p.m.

July 15: “Woodstock” (the director’s cut), 7:30 p.m.

July 16: “Valley of the Dolls,” “The Love Machine,” 7:30 p.m.

July 17: “Petulia,” “Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?,” 5 p.m.